Transforming technology within the Department of Defense

An agency team of the U.S. Digital Service, using design and technology to improve the lives of American citizens.

By the people. For the people.

The Department of Defense defends and protects our nation's military and civilians across the globe. Our projects range widely, from strengthening our national security, to taking care of our Veterans, or deploying next-generation GPS for billions of people. However, oftentimes our progress is hindered by outdated tools and practices that lag far behind private sector standards.

Our mission is to drive a giant leap forward in the way DoD builds and deploys technology and digital services. We work alongside our public servants and service members, empowering them to incorporate private sector best practices and talent to build a better future now.

Our work

We apply industry experience in shipping products to help deliver in-progress strategic or challenged projects. Explore some of the projects we’ve tackled:

Hack The Pentagon

The Defense Digital Service launched Hack the Pentagon, the first bug bounty program in the history of the federal government. The program won praise from Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, who wrote: “I am confident this innovative initiative will strengthen our digital defenses and ultimately enhance our national security.”

Hack The Air Force 2.0

Working closely with the Department of the Air Force, the Defense Digital Service launched its fourth bug bounty program, targeting unclassified Air Force systems for the second time. With the largest payout in any government bug bounty program to date, Hack The Air Force 2.0 awarded $125,000 in bounties for 110 vulnerabilities discovered. Open to hackers from 32 countries, this competition continues our work on broadening the community of hackers paid by DoD to find new vulnerabilities while building upon our partnership with Twenty-Fourth Air Force (Air Forces Cyber).

MIRS Form Transfer

As part of work on the MEPCOM Integrated Resource System (MIRS), the technical system that underpins the "accessions" process by which recruits are sworn into the military, the Defense Digital Service setup electronic records transfer between the MEPCOM systems and the Army, Navy, and Air Force human resources systems. This freed recruits from having to carry frequently lost paperwork from the accessions station to boot camp --- as well as keeping staff from having to re-enter the data by hand! Since launch in late 2017, this system has saved over 1.5 million pages of paper from being carried back and forth.

Code.mil

Code.mil is an experiment in open source at the U.S. Department of Defense in cooperation with Code.gov. The goal is to foster open collaboration with the developer community around the world on DoD open source projects. During the first phase, which launched in early 2017, the Defense Digital Service wrote a strategy for open sourcing code written by DoD employees and called upon the F/OSS developer community to help us finalize that plan.

Move.mil

Built in collaboration with military familes, Move.mil is the first stop for service members, their families and Department of Defense Civilians to plan their next Permanent Change of Station, Retirement, or Separation move. The site was completely overhauled by the Air Force Digital Service with the goal of providing key information to customers throughout each phase of their move.

Our team

Government is not an abstract institution or a concept. Our government is us. Meet some members of the Defense Digital Service who have signed on for nerd tours of duty:

Tim Van Name

Deputy Director

Previously: White House Information Technology

Chris Lynch

Fearless Leader

Previously: Serial Entrepreneur

Hunter Price

Director, Air Force Digital Service

Previously: Forsa Consulting

Patrick Stoddart

Director, Army Digital Service

Previously: Entrepreneur

Announcements

Army Digital Service

The Department of the Army and DDS jointly launched the Army Digital Service in December 2016 in an initiative to create a branch of DDS technologists aligned specifically with problems of impact within the Army.

The Army Digital Service offers an avenue for those who traditionally wouldn’t join the military to lend their skills by working alongside our Army civilians and uniformed personnel across arenas such as logistics, intelligence, healthcare, communications, and more.

Air Force Digital Service

The Department of the Air Force and DDS jointly launched the Air Force Digital Service in January 2017 to create a branch of DDS technologists to work on specific problems of impact within the Air Force.

The Air Force Digital Service offers an avenue for those who traditionally wouldn’t join the military to lend their skills by working alongside our Air Force civilians and uniformed personnel across arenas such as the global positioning system (GPS), aircraft software, logistics, communications, and more.

Join us

We want YOU!

We need passionate designers, software engineers, product managers and others, who are committed to making the Department of Defense's critical systems simple, fast and easy to use. You'll be working alongside brilliant civil servants and tech folk from across government and industry.

The Defense Digital Service is an agency team of the U.S. Digital Service headquartered at the White House, so every application goes through the USDS hiring pipeline. When applying, please write that you are interested in joining the Defense Digital Service team in the "Anything Else" section.